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A New York Times headline Wednesday proclaimed "Windows Are Ready for the Big Storm (the One from Last August)." The article was about the curious abundance of Manhattan apartment windows still taped in ineffectual and belated protection against Hurricane Irene. But it could well have been alluding to the financial markets' bracing for a rerun of last summer's gale of dangerous economic conditions.

The global selloff in risk assets during May, mostly prompted by the gradual but steady weakening in Europe's debt levees and sharp slowing in China's economy, was barely tallied by the time the lousy May employment report arrived Friday morning.

The meager net increase of 69,000 jobs was the poorest reading since—you guessed it—last August, as the 2011 Europe debt drama was peaking. And gold prices, so long in an ebb phase, had their largest one-day rise since August, too, as expectations of more central-bank money-conjuring surged. Big U.S. stocks had held up better than nearly every other risk-asset class for the year but succumbed Friday to more aggressive selling, the Dow industrials losing 274 points and surrendering all gains for the year.

With the Dow at 12,118, and the Standard & Poor's 500 at 1278—just about where they were sitting one year ago—the burden of proof falls upon those who have been suggesting, here and elsewhere, that 2012 need not hew so closely to the 2011 macro-panic-and-policy-rescue script.

The case for avoiding last year's fate, or worse, rests on somewhat larger fundamental cushions—and on the simple observation that traumas so fresh in mind don't usually allow for a hazardous complacency to rebuild so quickly. Corporate earnings, total employment, retail sales, housing activity and bank lending are all significantly higher than they were a year ago, while stock-market valuations at this year's market peak were less lofty than at the first-quarter 2011 peak. Further, there is now a new European Central Bank chairman who has shown more willingness to marshal monetary powers to head off banking collapse.

WITH STOCK MARKETS OUTSIDE the U.S. having lost 20% in the past 12 months and twice as much in May as American stocks, it wouldn't be much of a shock for the S&P 500 to sag another couple of percent back to that old familiar 1250 level, or a bit lower.

For reasons that may include sheer coincidence, this level is a frequent fulcrum for the index. The 1250 mark immediately preceded the Lehman Brothers collapse, was roughly where 2011 started and ended, and has been crossed during 10 separate weeks in the past year and at least 50 times since the index first got there 13 years ago.

Chartists already are on alert, with the S&P 500 breaking below the market's 200-day average, a measure the market also toggled above and below for parts of 2011. Now, as then, the evidence can support either a painful correction after a 30% rally, or the foreboding overture to a bear market.

Stocks are close to probing valuation levels that have tended to arrest declines in the past couple of years. The S&P 500 is trading below 13 times earnings for the past 12 months and less than 12 times forecast earnings, though it's a fair bet that those profit forecasts are vulnerable to downward pressure.

ONE THING ABOUT THIS YEAR'S market downturn is that it was preceded by a distinctly defensive tone, the majority hunkered against "expected shocks." Even before the overall market had shed 10%, the areas that call out loudest for punishment in a growth-and-credit scare had been pummeled, with financial, commodity, emerging markets and lower-quality tech names badly underperforming. Bespoke Investment Group notes that its log of the frequency of financial headlines on the virally popular online news aggregator Drudge Report is again approaching peak levels previously coinciding with tradable market lows.

This suggests a lot of the "de-risking" process has already unfolded, and that the merest of upbeat stimuli—with ECB policy makers meeting this week, and the Fed convening and Greece voting soon thereafter—would touch off a quicksilver rally, with the tape so oversold and the investor mood dour.